sometime ago i read about a company who's printed maps are well recognized for marking back country roads, and other interesting features handy for photographers. I misplaced my notes and could not find the name. What the recommendation from he folks here on good quality US maps.

I second Dustin about the Benchmark maps. Compared to Delorme I like them better. Pages overlap better in Benchmark maps so there is less flipping back and forth if your path crosses over a couple pages. Aside from Benchmark maps, the Forest Service maps are nice too. I just picked one up for the Idaho Panhandle and it has TONS of detail.

Benchmark and Delorme tend to be the most detailed hard copy maps for large (state sized) areas. Which is "better" depends both on the state and your intended use.

Depending on where you are going there may be Forest Service or BLM maps available as well. These are usually moderate resolution topos (15' at best) marked with FS or BLM road numbers (which can help you distinguish what are likely passable routes from old wagon trails on the older topos).

There are a variety of finer resolution commercial maps for popular spots (usually NPs). National Geographic and Tom Harrison being common choices.

Even better, and cheaper, if you have an iPad (or iPhone but the screen is a bit small) is Offline Topo Maps or something like it (assume similar options for Android tablets):

What is nice about this is all the maps are free, you can store arbitrarily large areas on the device for when you are out of data range and you can store multiple layers - including satellite and aerial images from multiple sources.